Hey All- I have crawled this site for years- thanks for all of the domain knowledge! I finally got out of the city (Dallas, Tx) into the country. I have 1.2 acres and want to put a small, 1/8 acre pond at the lowest point, hoping for a max depth of 11ish feet. I have 3 or 4 acres of drainage in my watershed. I got a little Bx23s with a backhoe and dug down about 4 feet. I have 2.5-3' of very hard black clay, then it turns to a sand stone mess that looks like it will dump water. The top layer of my property is severely cracked when dry leading me to believe it has a high clay content. It was tough digging and the clay balls are so dense I could barely break them with a shovel.
I had a couple of guys out last week to quote my little pond, they all "think it will work". A couple of questions, and i apologize for the long intial post...-
-Assuming that under the clay layer it's all that sand stone junk, does this seem feasible by redistribution the clay from the dig? If not, could I have the guy pull the top layer off other areas of the property and achieve a natural bottom pond?
-Do I have enough watershed to keep the pond reasonably full assuming a decent rain year? Stats I have found suggest 5 acres to 1 acre of pond... seems low to me in my region?
I know this is a tiny pond... I HOPE to start this year with fat head minnow, then move in some BG if it fills up this fall. If possible, I'd like to add some LMB to it next year if all else proves fruitful. I'd like the fish to be able to reproduce and sustain a population. I'm not worried about size of the fish and do plan on harvesting both BG and LMB each year. Id, rather not go with pellet feeding, or non reproducing hybrids if i can avoid it. I would also be willing to restock FHM pretty regularly. I know from past threads that to even consider this I would need to fertilize it and heavily oxygenate it. I'm flexible on stocking and annual harvest volumes.
When I was young, we had a smaller pond that was completely unmanaged on family land in the mountains of VA. Every year we caught and harvested BG and LMB out it. I know this is probably the exception rather than a rule but that's what I'm hoping to recreate, in a sense. A couple of questions on this point-
--what would you think about stocking ratios?
- if too ambitious, what would you reccomend stocking?
- any pro tips I may be missing?
- attaching a "to scale" design on my survey for reference. Is this a silly shape for this size pond? The trees are existing and was hoping to keep the large one. I think the roots might make that idea a non starter... it's a hackberry.
Any advice anyone has for me would be welcome, thanks in advance for everything!
With the good clay you had, the contractor may have done only about a 1' thick clay blanket to seal a pond with a depth of 10' or less. With good compaction in lifts, and under NORMAL pond conditions, that would be capable of perfect sealing. With plenty of good clay, he may even have made a clay blanket of 2' or more.
The problem is, many crayfish burrow down 3' deep, and some may burrow as much as 10' deep!
I really think it is a "creature" problem when you say the pond is fine for weeks and then suddenly drains.
I am NOT an expert on eliminating the crayfish, but we do have experts to help on that problem.
Can you trap or catch a few so we can get the correct species identification? Also measure their size on a few specimens.
We may need to target them with the correct size and type of predator to eliminate them.
The other option may be to outcompete them. Perhaps there is a non-burrowing crayfish you could stock that would reduce the population of the darn burrowers?
Good luck fixing your problem. I hope you get some better advice from our actual experts on this topic.
I'm working with my in-laws' two 1/5ac ponds in west TN. My BIL stocked them with BG and LMB 10 to 12 years ago. That's it. He never did anything else: never added more fish, never fished it, nada. One is surrounded by 20 to 30ft trees, don't know the species. The other pond had all the trees removed. I never got a bite on the pond surrounded by trees. The other one? I fished it in April and August. Non stop catching. In April it was a ton of small BG. I finally quit using the small grasshopper lure so I wouldn't catch anymore. I also caught a bunch of 3/4lb to 1lb LMB. August I tried some larger lures. And in no time caught a 2lb then a 3lb LMB! I was amazed. I mean my in-laws did nothing after the initial fish release. There was also a fairly serious drought a couple of years ago that really dropped the water level in the ponds. But obviously the fish survived. Just an anecdote to show how large bass can grow in a small pond. I would assume the 3lber are about the upper limit. But hey, in my book, that's awesome. I had a great time catching that 3lber. Best of luck with your pond!
